Semester 1 Review

What Did I Learn?

Technology

     Throughout the semester, I learned how to better use Illustrator so my patterns looked natural and connected together so when putting my pattern onto mockups and a digital layout of my box, it would all fit correctly and perfectly. I have learned so much in the technology department of e-Com. When I was a Freshmen, I could barely use Photoshop, and Premier Pro. I struggled so much, but i eventually learned how to use both of them efficiently. The next year when I was a Sophomore, I hated Illustrator because I didn't know anything. It was if I was starting over again in the learning process. I eventually learned the tools and shortcuts of Illustrator that I now use Illustrator whenever there's Graphic Design involved, even in my daily life. I used to do very small projects in Illustrator that would take a couple hours to about a day, but now I have done so many month long projects in and out of Illustrator that I have the stamina and attention span to dit down and do what I need to get done. My Sophomore year, we did many Photoshop tutorials, and then towards the end, I did a Vector portrait of my grandfather and many other vector portraits. The Photoshop tutorials took minutes, maybe a hour at most. The Vector Portrait took many weeks and hours to do. I had to stay after school to finish the project. I worked so hard and stayed after school so long that my muscles in my hands were sore. While I worked so much in Illustrator, I do need to go back and do some Photoshop work since those skills have been neglected for some time now. 

Collaboration and Communication

     In Graphic Design, I often asked my teacher and the people around me what they thought of my design once I was done. I'd get compliments as well as critiques. I did my best to fix my designs based on the critiques and see what worked best. Everyone around me had amazing ideas to share. In the past, I wasn't very open or vocal about anything. I was mostly introverted, and still introverted to this day. However, thanks to Video and other events outside of e-Com, I am able to fulfill any role needed and am ready to give my opinion or thoughts on something if need be. I am also more open about asking for critiques during random stages of the creating process. I have made great friends because of e-Com not just in the Graphic Design branch, but in the other branches as well. 

     Before I even entered high school, I was very communicative. I always told teachers when I would be absent and e-mail them when I was sick or gone unexpectedly. So, from a professional standpoint, I was communicative, but from a more casual standpoint, not so much. Once I get to know people, I become very open, but team projects were always something I didn't really like. Thanks to e-Com, I have had many opportunities to be open and communicate what needs to be done as well as goof around here and there.

Project Management

      In middle school and even sometimes to this day, I procrastinate quite often, however if I am away from distractions and given "free" time, then I get projects and other things done usually before the deadline. Going through the e-Com program, I have always completed projects and have been aware of deadlines. I have stayed after school for hours sometimes finishing a project. I try to use class time to my advantage and use as much of it as possible to work on a current project. One thing I wish to correct in the future, however, is to stay on task better and not get sidetracked by friends. 

Leadership

     I wouldn't consider myself a leader. In group projects, I fulfill any role that needs to be filled. However, if being a leader or director or head project person is the role that needs to be filled, I'll step up and be the leader. I do have many leadership qualities like listening to others as well as being able to take control of situations. 

Typography

Pre-Production

     The first steps to this project were finding quotes that were significant to me. I found ten quotes, and then picked four out of the ten quotes to use for my project. All of my quotes were French, so I decided to do this project with the French and English versions of the quotes. The second step was picking fonts. I picked a total of six fonts, however, I did not use one of the fonts in my project. 

Production
      The third step in this project was working in Illustrator. I learned how to use layers, type tool, gradient tool, the tool where I can type around a shape (I forget what it's called), shape tool, and the direct selection tool.

     I arranged my project by making four artboards, one for each of the quotes I picked in Pre-production. I made a different shape for each quote so I could use a reference for what I want the quote to look like. On the first artboard, it was a heart, the second was an eye, third was a tv, and the fourth one was a peace sign. I had ideas for what text to use for the different quotes.

     Originally, our quotes had to be in black and white before we started using color.  All of my quotes had a white background, but I changed two of them to have a black background. This made the two quotes more interesting and stand out from the other two.

     When it was time to move on to color,  I used blue and yellow for my first quote, green and black for my second, different shades of grey for my third one, and two different gradients for my last one. After I finished my first round of adding color, I asked my teacher for any critiques, and she did. I fixed up what she critiqued, and made sure everything looked better with these new changes.

     On my first quote, I added more of the heart shape I made, scaled it down a bit, and changed the color to a brighter blue. I did this process again. In total, I had three heart shapes on my first quote. I also copied the text on the heart and changed the copied text color to a dark gold color, and put the original text over it. Around the heart is the quote in French and in English. I also added a drop shadow to the text surrounding the heart to make it stand out from the page a bit.

     For my second quote, I added a darker green circle to the iris of the eye and added a little white shine. I also fixed the text around the iris.

     Moving on to my third project, I added some texture to the grey squares that made up the pixels on the tv to make it seem more like white noise. I also used the bulge option to make the square of pixels a bit round so it doesn't look flat I later went back and changed the text color to red, yellow, green and blue.

     Lastly, my fourth quote has a purple, blue and green gradient as the background. The text has a red, yellow, green, and light blue gradient. I also bloated the text a bit to add some more direction. For textures, I gave the text a mosaic texture to make it stand out even more.

Final Product

 This is my first one, and I think I did okay. It's cute and simple, but if I were to do this one again, I'd probably pick a different shape. I think the critiques I got on this one improved this one fro being eh to pretty good.

 My second one is very interesting in style. I picked shapes depending on what the quote talked about. The English is very hard to read compared to the French, but the English portion says, "It is with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye"

I chose to do a tv shape for this quote due to how political some tv shows or movies can get. As kids, everything is new and exciting. Eventually, kids grow up and realize that things aren't as mystical as they seem to be. As kids, we watch tv shows full of adventure, and learning new lessons about manners or being kind to others. Eventually, kids grow up to be adults. As adults, there is less emphasis on cartoons, tv shows and sometimes movies, and more emphasis on what is going on in the real world. I used tv as an example to explain this quote. Another reason why I chose a tv for the shape was because when I first saw this quote, the first thing that popped in my head was tv.  I really like how this one turned out.

My fourth and final quote. "Doing is better than saying". I chose a peace sign for this because this quote reminds me of protests throughout the years. Protesters do protests for multiple reasons, but their actions can greatly affect others, whether it's positive or negative. If protesters were to complain instead of doing something, nothing would be changed, dramatically at least. I also chose Gradients for this project just to change things up a bit. I feel like this one is pretty good. The peace sign shape is evident, and the colors work well together. 

Printing Processes

What are the Printing Processes?

The three main printing processes are Relief, Intaglio and Lithography. These processes all include a transfer of ink from a certain surface to paper. All of them have a different process which I will explain in detail. 

Relief

use a block of wood or a piece of linoleum

Use tools similar to a woodcutter would if working on wood 

Tone the block with Indian ink wash or wash of a jet black film. This works on linoleum but isn't necessary

Use Iron Oxide or Carbon paper transfer that has your design already on prepared

Transfer the image

Decide on if you want to use White line, which reveals the image through thin white lines, or Black Line, which is removing majority of the wood to reveal the image. A balance of boh is usually used.

Roll ink onto the block

Place in Press

If done by hand, use a baren, which is a tool used to transfer the ink from the block to paper, ad apply gentle pressure all over the paper on the block.  

 carefully pull the paper off of the block and check to make sure the image transferred.

Intaglio

prepare plate  by cleaning it

apply a ground to the plate which acts as a nonacid 

smoke the plate by placing it upside down

scratch away the ground to reveal the metal

etch the plate for fifteen minutes

submerge plate in a bath/pan of acid

clean the plate again

wipe the plate with ink 

hand-wipe the edges 

put chalk on your hands and brush over the surface

set on press

use a dampened sheet of paper

print.

Lithography

use a lithographic stone like limestone to draw on

use Lithographic materials/pencils/crayon to draw on stone

remove grease with sandpaper or razorblades if needed

Once drawing is finished, use gum arabic and rub all over stone

Use rosin and Talc to establish drawing

Apply acidified gum arabic  or TAPEM

apply more gum arabic

use cheesecloth to buff in 

use lithotine 

use aphaltem

apply water to clean

rub ink with an ink roller over the image

apply dampend paper

press. 

repeat adding ink to stone and press four to six times. 

Which one would I do?

I'd do lithography because I don't know much about wood or metal and I think stone would be a similar surface to paper since I draw a lot. I think these processes have some influence in contemporary design. 

Multi-Exposure Panorama

   

     Going to Paris, France was one of the best trips I've ever had. The culture, language, food, architecture, people, and geography are all things I love. The photos I used in this collage were from the second level of the Eiffel Tower. 

     It was on a Sunday. Toby and my grandpa decided to visit Sainte-Chapelle, which is the most beautiful cathedral in my opinion. Then, we walked around a bit to visit the Luxemburg Garden, which is bigger than huge, and got some gelato at the best gelato place in Paris, Amorino. 

     We then decided to visit the Eiffel tower, and my grandpa and I got in line to climb up the stairs to the second level. We had to take two little breaks to catch our breath due to the amount of stairs there were.  When we reached the first level, we looked out at the view, but there was a fence blocking some of the scenery. 

     My grandpa and I continued up the stairs and finally reached the second level. There were hundreds of tourists looking out at the beautiful view of Paris. I was fortunate enough to capture some photos. The view was amazing! It reminded me of that scene of Ratatouille where Remy sees the beautiful view of Paris. 

      A few months later, school starts and I'm in Graphic Design. I've finished many projects and side projects and our ext project has to be a collage of photos we've taken. I decided to use the photos from the Eiffel tower because of the beautiful view. I did edit the original photos to give it more of an "old-timey" feel. I started putting it together by lining up the photos with the Seine river and go from there. I used the eraser tool probably one hundred times as well as many layer masks. Overall, I think I did Paris justice in capturing it's beauty and essence.  

Pop Art Design

The Process

     I started by selecting photos of my partner and chose the one I thought I could work with easily. I decided to use the primary colors for the subject and secondary colors for the background. I did put in some yellow arrows to add some normal shapes and to create more of a "pop art" feel. I was mostly inspired by Roy Lichtenstein, who used a lot of primary colors. I used a lot of color balance to change the colors of the subject aw well as some gradients for the background and for the glasses. I had a little trouble with the gradient tool due to my lack of experience with it, but i eventually figured it out.  I did have some trouble with the hair and glasses because the hair had little details that I couldn't include and with the glasses because i used a gradient on the glass part of them. Overall, I enjoyed this project, not my favorite, but one I enjoyed. 

The Project 

"Nature Man"

      This assignment was to Photoshop a man using either the provided photos or our own and edit him using the photos. The goal was to keep his face visible

The Process

Here is Alien Man. My edit of the challenge

     At the beginning, I was going to do a horror themed edit, but I didn't find any images I liked or thought would be interesting, so I ditched the idea, and decided to make it Outer Space-galaxy-star themed. I found a lot of different images of stars and planets as well as some alien themed photos as well and compiled all of them together and created Alien Man, at least that's what I titled it once I saved it. I didn't use the photos provided because they photos of mountains, trees, tree roots, hence the name of this blog, "Nature Man".  

      I used a lot of layer masks to edit all of this together. It wasn't difficult, but it was a lot of "rinse and repeat". Every photo I added had to be resized, erase the unwanted bits, make sure it looks "natural" etc. I I really enjoyed this project, and I highly recommend doing this challenge to anyone with basic photoshop skills. I used a lot of the skill from the previous lessons and incorporated them into this project. There were some days where all I wanted to do was work on this project. 

Finished Project

     I'm really happy with the way it came out. It is interesting and weird, but I think it works. I have shown some of my friends and they all seemed to like it. I did finish early because I came in during lunch to work on it because of how much fun I had working on it. Since I finished early, I had extra time to make another edit on a different photo. Same rules applied but it was whoever we found on Google. 

The Extra Edit

     This extra edit was especially fun because it is of a video game character from a game I like. The game is called Undertale and the character I chose is Undyne. I think . I did a pretty good job. I didn't do as much detail as my last edit. For example, I didn't edit the clothes, hair or background and instead, focused more on the facial features. Again, this edit was for fun, but I still think I did a decent job. I did forget to edit some things like the earrings, and forgot to add some eyeshadow and gills to the character, but I think it's still recognizable. 

Photoshop

What was the project?

The whole purpose of this project was to learn about photoshop, its tools and how to photoshop different items and people. 

                       Lesson One

     The first lesson was on content aware fill, which is deleting unwanted items out of a photo or backgr
ound. I had four different photos that I had to photoshop and it was simple and easy to do. I really enjoyed learning this simple trick and it will help me in the future. Originally, this photo to the left had many unnecessary items and blemishes, but thanks to Photoshop, I easily got rid of those unwanted blemishes and objects and made it what it is now.

Lesson Two

     Patch Tool is a variation of lesson one. I learned that Content Aware Fill won't always work fr getting rid of unwanted objects or items. The Patch Tool is a good substitute to get rid of bigger items such as t-shirt logos. I had a harder time making the shirt look more natural, but for the lesson, I did a good job.

       Lesson Three

     While getting rid of unwanted items is all good and an essential lesson in Photoshop, knowing how to make the rest look natural without the unwanted item is also necessary. That's what Clone Stamp and Healing Brush help you do. I thought I did a pretty good job on this. The goal of this project was to get rid of a clothing tag on the jacket near the arm and pocket of the right side of the photo. Overall I did a pretty good job, however I did make one, very little minuscule mistake near the pocket, but from afar, it isn't noticeable.  I did enjoy learning this skill and will need it in the future.

Lesson Four

The objective of this Photoshop lesson was to get rid of unwanted background items. Tis lesson was called Clone Stamp and Patch Tool. We used the clone stamp from the previous lesson as well as the patch tool from lesson two and combined them to erase a pole in the background. We used the clone stamp to get rid of the section near the guy's head as well as the entire pole, then used the patch tool to make the sky more natural. I enjoyed this lesson more than the previous lessons. This and lesson one are my top favorites. 

Lesson Five

Lesson Five was using the spot healing brush to get rid of blemishes and make the skin smoother. The photo was already in black and white and originally, the boy was covered in dirt and just had some blemishes here and there. Thanks to the spot healing brush, it was easy to get rid of the dirt spots and blemishes. This lesson was okay, I did enjoy it, but not one I'd want to do every week. 

Lesson Six

Out of all the lessons so far, this lesson was the most complicated and least liked by me. The goal was to make a collage out of three photos of a girl modeling. As you can see, I messed up on one of her faces. I had to go back to different sections of the lesson and repeat many things because I would make a mistake and have to delete a layer. This was the hardest out of all of them and took me many days, almost a week, to complete. This lesson was complicated and harder than the previous lessons so it makes sense as to the amount of time I had to spend on it, but that doesn't mean I enjoyed it. All in all, it was a good way to combine every skill previously learned as well as some new ones, but not one I'd do again. 

 

CSS and CARP Design

      This latest project was a web project. I started using HTML and ending in HTML. It was a learning process for me because I'm not very savvy when it comes to web design. Most of he steps were already written out, so that made things a lot easier. This was all based around a poem, and by applying CARP, the poem looks much better and captivates the reader.

Contrast

     Contrast was used through colors based off the dog as well as the style of text. Some text is bold, and other text is italics. Some colors are darker and other are lighter. The main background is black, but the body, or second background, of the poem is a lighter tan. The heading of the poem is a lighter color than the poem. 

Alignment

     The body of the poem is lined up with the credits at the bottom. The title is lined in the middle with other parts of the title underneath. At the top, there is a link that is aligned with the poem and the credits. 

Repetition

     The title and the credits are the same color. All the colors originate from the dog, repeating a theme. The link at the top has the same color as the body and the title. 

Proximity

     Everything is spaced out evenly from each other. The dog is outside of the body, combining the background with the body. The title is separated by space and font style to create proximity. The stanzas are evenly spaced from each other, making everything else look even. 

Conclusion

     I learned how to apply CARP with web design in HTML. I did have to go into the code a little bit, but it was to make the font Georgia appear on the page. I think CSS is fun to mess around with every once in a while, but not something I want to do everyday. 

Logo Designs

Process

     The latest project in e-Com is designing a personal logo. First, I started by writing my name in different ways like in cursive, my normal handwriting, and trying to mimic other fonts. Then I started drawing shapes around my name. I decided my name was too big for a logo, so I went with my initials. After three pages of sketching, I decided to write my cursive initials in a circle. I then worked on my logo in Adobe Illustrator. I first did it in black and white to make sure it looked good without any color. Once I was happy, I started adding color. The letters have a yellow outline, which, to me, makes it look like they are outlined in gold, and the circle is an red-orange color. I also tried outlining the letters in silver with the circle being blue or purple, but I decided to go with the gold and red-orange because it was bright and energetic. I then messed around with making the circle lighter or darker, and messed around with the letters. Some examples have the letters filled with a grey color with a yellow outline. I like a lot of the darker ones, but when making them smaller, it was hard to tell what it was, so I went with the red-orange circle with yellow outline on the letters. 

Here is my new logo!

Mockups 

     After I chose my logo, I then used the mockups my teacher let us use. A mockup is just an example someone can put their logo on. I decided to go with a round sign, business card, an iPhone app, a small billboard and a storefront. I only needed to do four, but I decided to do one more just to make sure I was happy with my logo.  My logo looked good and I was happy with it, so this is my new logo. I chose warm colors because yellow is happy and energetic while red/orange added to that happy, bright, and energetic feel to the yellow letters. I also decided to go with cursive letters because cursive is very elegant and added some class to my logo. 

Oz Poster and C.A.R.P

Here is the poster I redesigned

Contrast

• Used white and yellow to stand out from the backround
• "Oz" is bigger than everything else on the poster
• Credits are the smallest things on the poster
• Used different fonts

Alignment

• "Olathe Northwest" and "The Wizard of Oz" is aligned
• All the information relating to this event is all aligned
• Credits are aligned

Repetition

• Used Yellow for the Title and the credits
• "Olathe Northwest Theatre Presents" and all the information relating to this event are the same color
• The silhouettes of the main characters and the title are the same color

Proximity

• The title is together with the "Olathe Northwest Theatre Presents"
• All the information relating to this event are grouped together and are the same color
• Credits are grouped together with the same color and size

Color Wheel

What was the project?

     This latest project was to create the color wheel in Adobe Illustrator. Creating the color wheel was very simple and easy due to the shortcuts the teacher taught us. If a student didn't use the shortcuts, the project would take longer, but it would still be easy. All we had to include was the primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. Some examples of tertiary colors are blue-green, red-violet, and yellow-green. 

What did I learn? 

     In Adobe Illustrator, projects are a lot easier if you know the shortcuts. Since I already used Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premier Pro, I was already familiar with how Adobe works. I learned a lot of new shortcuts that made this project more efficient. I also learned how reshape the project to what it is now. 

How did I do? 

This is another Color Wheel that I made. 

     I think I did pretty good. It was a fairly easy and simple project that reintroduced me to colors and their relationship with other colors. I was very picky on the blue-green section because I don't use blue-green that often when I color. If I do, I just take a green crayon or colored pencil, shade in the section I want, then take blue, and color over the green. I guess I have a hard time with blue green because I didn't get it to the shade I wanted. That's what I would do differently. 

What would I do differently? 

     To be honest, this project was simple and easy, but it defiantly got me thinking more about graphic design as a whole, and how color affects us in our daily life. If I did have to change one thing it would to ask students to include some introduction to color theory. For example, students can choose either primary or secondary colors and explain, in their own opinion, how these colors affect them or others when they see this color.

E9 Quarter 2 Web Project

 

My Home Page

Overview

      For my semester project, I learned how to build a website using Adobe Dreamweaver. I first started out with a pre-made template created by the teachers, then I started putting in a photo of myself along with entering my"elevator pitch" assignment where I was to create an "elevator pitch" describing myself and my talents. I then created a second page with my best projects from the semester. I included one of my animations, and my chase scene video. Once that was done, I put in some web links like my blog, my high school website, and the e-Com website. Once all of that was finished, I began to design the page by changing the text colors and changing the fonts. Once that was all done, I took a screenshot of my home page and my projects page.

What Did I Learn? 

My Projects, or "best of" page

     First of all, I learned how to make a website without using a website like Wix. It's astonishing to me that I created my own website through Adobe Dreamweaver. I also leaned more about codes and what some of the codes mean. At first, the coding looked like a big, complicated, big bunch of weird nonsense, but as I started learning what some of it meant, the code wasn't as complicated or a whole bunch of weird nonsense. Code, from what I learned, is like any other language. At first it won't make sense, but as I learned it, it started making sense and I started to understand it better.

My Opinion

     Overall, I think I did pretty well. Some of the coding was a bit tricky when it came to stylizing the links, but once I figured that out, everything else was easy. I really enjoyed this project, and I would probably do it again just for fun. learning about code was one of the more essential focuses of this project, and I enjoyed it. Honestly, I had a grand time with this project and look forward doing a similar one in the future. 

10 Words Animation

The Design

     i first came up with a list of words that best described me. After that, I used adobe Photoshop to animate the words. I don't like it when people use one color or shade of each word when it comes to these types of things, so I used a variety of colors and shades. 

Here's my animation

Extroverted Side

     As I mentioned before, i love children, and care for them deeply. Children love to laugh a lot, so in order to keep them happy, i do random things like walk silly or state obvious facts like "Food is edible" at random times. I love to talk to children as well.

Introverted Me

     I do need some time to myself just lay back, and calm down. So that's why I said I was introverted. I love to read as well, and everywhere you look, there is something to read. Sometimes it's nice to look around and see what's going on. 

Google Sketchup House

     My most recent project In E-com was to build a house in Google Sketchup. Google Sketchup is a program run by Google, and i gives users the ability to build whatever comes to their minds. In my opinion, it's like Minecraft, but with curves.  The controls are pretty simple and easy for beginners, such as myself, to use and help them better understand how to create objects in a 3D computer world.  

This is the front of the house on the website

     To start, I found a real house that was for sale on a website called House plans. I first started designing one house, but I gave up because it was too difficult.  So I found another house. It seemed pretty simple and easy, so I started recreating it in Google Sketchup. Everything was going fine. I knew how to use most of the tools, and the tools id didn't know how to use, I never used.
     Once the basic layout was set, I started running into some trouble. I spent way too much time on two windows because Google Sketchup was giving me a hard time, and felt like being a rebel, and not do what I wanted it to do. I couldn't create a simple, easy, little window because the tools wouldn't do what I wanted them to do. I was pretty frustrated, and upset. I eventually dealt with it, and found a way to create the windows, but it still was agonizing.
     After I was done with the two windows, pretty much everybody in my class was done, and I knew i was behind. Being behind makes me feel like I have to do more work than I really need to do, and I tend to rush things, and I'll get flustered if others try to bother me while I'm working and trying to focus. It's not good for anyone if I am or feel behind. Luckily, I did finish and when I did i realized I wasn't that far behind everybody else.

My seamless stone texture

     When I did finish, I texturized the house. That means I just put colors and textures on my house. It wasn't too difficult. In fact it was the easiest part of the project. Part of this project was to find a seamless texture on the internet. I did, and it is absolutely beautiful because gray stone is obviously prettier than diamonds.
      Overall, I didn't hate this project, but I wasn't fond of it either. If I could do it again, I wouldn't because I thought was going to lose my sanity trying to create those two windows, and I don't  want to go through that again, but if I absolutely had to do it again, then I would change it where the students can choose to create their own house, or find one online, and not do an exact recreation of it, but change it to where there some similarities but the student's creation is still its own thing.

     Click here to see more of the real house :)